


orbit

by iceprinceofbelair



Series: a force more powerful than gravity [1]
Category: The Fall (TV 2013), The X-Files
Genre: Bisexual Dana Scully, Detective Sergeant Stella Gibson, Doctor Dana Scully, F/F, First Meetings, Grief, London, Minor Injuries, Mulder is dead sorry, Past Character Death, Past Fox Mulder/Dana Scully, She's not a DSI yet, Stroppy Starbuck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-06-14 06:49:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15383055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iceprinceofbelair/pseuds/iceprinceofbelair
Summary: After Mulder is killed during one of their cases, Scully moves to London and takes a job in a hospital. She meets Stella Gibson, a detective with ambition and a broken wrist, and she starts to build a new life.





	1. like a neutron star collision

**Author's Note:**

> I was inspired by this tumblr post and tbh the entire series of these edits is so sweet! http://the-pink-posse.tumblr.com/post/161797302820/stroppy-starbuck

London is not like Washington, Dana Scully discovers on her first day in her new apartment.  _ Flat,  _ she corrects herself.  _ They’re called flats here.  _ Where Washington is clean, London is dirty; where Washington is quiet, London is loud. It has much more character than her country’s capital, she thinks. It’s older. It carries history in its brickwork and Scully likes that feeling of being part of something much bigger and older than she is. 

_ Isn’t that the same reason you joined the FBI?  _ asks a traitorous voice in her head which sounds a lot like her brother. She mentally gives him the finger and ignores him.

Her flat is small but it’s well-located, close to the hospital where she’s due to start working as a doctor four days from now. The thought isn’t actually as exciting as she’d once hoped it might be. As much as she’s looking forward to getting back into practicing medicine, she’s having a hard time imagining how anything could come close to being even remotely as exciting as her time on the X files. 

But she tries not to think about that because, if she does, she’ll cry. She misses Mulder but she’s been through this. She’s buried him. She’s grieved him. She needs this fresh start.

So she starts unpacking and sticks at it for a few hours before she finally gives up and collapses on her freshly made bed without bothering to find her pyjamas. She stares up at the ceiling, trying to find patterns in the splatter-effect paintwork. She tries not to think about Mulder, about home. When she can’t fall asleep, she unearths a box marked “personal things” and extracts a cardboard tube. She hangs Mulder’s poster on the wall. It looks out of place against the cream walls but Scully thinks it’s fitting. After all, Mulder never did quite fit in anywhere, why would his memory in her life be any different?

She stares at the poster for a while before she swallows a sleeping pill and passes out on top of the covers with her watch still on her wrist.

~

_ He’s got a fucking gun,  _ Stella thinks, wishing she could swear out loud but she can’t because she’s trapped in a damn high school classroom with seven school kids and an armed criminal. Marvellous.

“Dale,” she begins softly, trying not to let her fear show when he points the gun at her chest. “Can I call you Dale?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “You know you’re already in trouble but if you hurt me, if you hurt these kids, you’ll be in prison for the rest of your life.”

“Shut up!” Dale Thomas yells. 

Stella isn’t fazed. “You don’t want to do this, Dale.”

“You don’t know what the hell I want!” Dale shouts, growing increasingly erratic. 

It’s times like this that she wishes she had someone in her ear. She doesn’t have nearly enough extensive training in psychology to predict what this particular gun-wielding madman needs to keep him calm. She just has to keep him calm and talking. Her team will know by now that Dale Thomas is armed and that this is a hostage situation. They’ll be setting up a negotiator. She just needs to hold out until then. She needs to make friends.

“I know you don’t want to go to prison,” she ventures carefully, keeping her voice quiet. “And I know you don’t want to die.”

He looks at her, sizing her up. She holds his gaze.

“I know how these situations work. They’ll have armed officers on the roof opposite to take you out if you walk by the window. They’ll be on the stairs and blocking every exit. You have to make some very smart decisions if you want to get out of here alive.”

“Shut up,” he snaps. “Why the hell would you want to help me?”

Stella smiles ruefully. “Because I don’t want to die either.”

That seems to throw him. Perhaps not much, but enough for him to lower his gun momentarily. Stella isn’t stupid enough to throw herself at him with six kids at risk but she wishes she could beat the shit out of him right now.

Her mobile starts to ring and he’s stiff as a board again, pointing the gun right between her eyes.

“Turn it off!” He yells.

She takes a deep breath. “That will be a police negotiator. They’re calling to find out what you want. You should answer it.”

“Don’t move!” Dale warns, reaching towards her coat pocket. The barrel of his gun brushes her hair and, for a brief moment, she wants to cry.

While Dale takes the phone call, Stella glances around to take stock of the six kids trapped in here with them. One of them, a pale girl with dark brown hair, is the daughter of the woman this lunatic is obsessed with. This is the only way he can get her attention now and it makes Stella sick. Thankfully, the kids are unharmed. They’re looking to her for reassurance. She smiles and puts a finger to her lips.

_ Leave this to me,  _ she says in her mind, hoping they’ll understand.  _ Please don’t do anything to draw attention to yourselves. _

“I said I want to speak to Emily!” Dale yells, hanging up and tossing Stella’s phone unceremoniously onto the teacher’s desk. 

He storms back over to where Stella sitting with her back against the wall, nursing a potentially broken wrist from her earlier “hands on” approach to dealing with the situation. That was before she knew he had a gun. Shoving his face into hers, gun against her temple, he snarls, “What do I have to say to get them to let me talk to her?”

Stella swallows. “When they call back, tell them that you’ll let the kids go if they get her for you. They’ll ask you to let the kids go first. That’s normal. They need a show of good faith before they’ll do something for you.”

Dale looks at her fearfully and, if he weren’t currently holding seven people hostage, she might have felt sorry for him.

(In the end, nobody dies and her wrist is in fact broken.)

~

“Hi Alison, I’m Doctor Scully. How are you feeling today?”

Scully’s first day in the orthopedic outpatient department has been largely uneventful. She finds herself slipping into the predictable rhythm of the hospital with unexpected ease. Patients come and go and, before she knows it, she’s eating her peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the break room before she returns for her afternoon shift. 

Alison Henna’s fractured ankle is healing nicely, Scully is glad to note, and she sends her on her way with a new appointment in a few weeks. She types up her notes in the time she has before her next appointment and then quickly skims the next patient file.

“Stella Gibson?” She says to the crowded waiting room, smiling when a blonde woman begins to gather her things and follows Scully into her consulting room.

“Hi Stella, I’m Doctor Scully,” she says with a warm smile. “Any additional problems with your wrist I should know about?”

Stella Gibson returns her smile briefly. “Nothing to report,” she says in a matter-of-fact tone and Scully, though she’s getting used to the accents, finds herself momentarily weak at the knees at the sound of Stella’s voice. 

_ Like chocolate,  _ she thinks and immediately scolds herself.

“We’ve got the results of your x-ray,” she says, hoping she isn’t blushing as she tilts the computer screen so Stella can see. She points her pinky finger to a thin black line. “You’ve got a hairline fracture just here, in the scaphoid bone. You’ll need some support until it’s fully healed.”

Stella nodded absently and said, “When can I go back to work?”

“That depends on your job,” Scully returns. 

“I work in law enforcement,” she says and Scully finds herself smiling fondly. 

“I used to work in law enforcement,” she says, unprompted. 

Stella looks mildly surprised. “In America?” She asks.

“Only a true detective could deduce my nationality from the subtleties of my accent,” Scully says playfully, delighted by the sight of another smile from Stella. “Yes, I used to be an FBI agent.”

This time, Stella’s eyebrows almost disappear into her hair. “Why did you leave?”

All at once, Scully feels her mood darken but she tries to prevent this from showing outwardly. It wouldn’t be professional. So she says, “Lots of reasons but mostly I felt like I should probably put all that money I spent on medical school to good use.”

She doesn’t mention Mulder.

“What about you?” She asks as she works. “What drew you to the job?”

Stella is quiet for a moment. “I ask myself that same question sometimes. Especially when crazy gunmen decide to break my wrist.”

It isn’t a real answer, but Scully supposes that’s fair. She hadn’t been honest either and she has a feeling Stella can see right through her.

“You still go into hostage situations, then,” Scully muses. “I’d have pegged you to be the one leading those operations.”

Stella smirks. “One day. For now, I’m a Detective Sergeant. We still end up in the middle of things.”

“I see that,” Scully says. “When I was an agent, I got into my fair share of scrapes. I was almost beheaded once.”

Scully is more than a little pleased to have startled the unshakable Stella Gibson and tries not to enjoy the look of alarm on her face. She smiles reassuringly.

“We were investigating the disappearance of an inspector at a poultry factory. Several people died while we were there and my autopsies found that all of the victims suffered from an incredibly rare non-contagious brain disorder. It seemed statistically impossible until we realised that we’d wandered into the middle of a cannibalistic cult,” she continues, getting no small enjoyment from Stella’s disgusted intrigue. “They thought consuming human flesh could keep them young. When we were on the verge of the truth, I was knocked out and woke up next to a bonfire with someone forcing my head onto a block. My partner shot the guy just in time.”

Stella's surprise turns to quiet amusement. “You really think fixing bone fractures is more exciting?”

“Not more exciting,” Scully agrees nonchalantly. “But I’ll probably have fewer grey hairs. You’re good to go.”

Scully watches Stella leave with mild disappointment but she doesn’t feel quite so lonely anymore.


	2. my head is full of you

By the time her shift finally ends, Scully is ready to sleep until late spring. Her first week at the hospital had been more eventful than expected. Most memorable of all was the rather charming young man who had told her - all smoulder and smiles - that he’d broken his leg in a thrilling and dangerous fight with a dragon and asked her for her number. He’d pretended to be wounded by her laughing decline but all-in-all had taken the rejection in good faith and had made a crack about her having access to his records if she ever changed her mind.

Unprofessional as it might be, Scully had found herself somewhat hung up on the attractive blonde who had come into her office on her first day with a broken wrist and a voice like melted chocolate. Christ, she thinks, I’m writing poetry already.

Part of her does feel a little like a schoolgirl. Her stomach flutters when she thinks about their brief conversation, about the pull she still feels towards Stella Gibson. At this rate, she’s going to have to cite a conflict of interest and get Stella a new doctor for her next check-up on Monday though she _really_ doesn’t want to tell Doctor Wilkins that she can’t treat a patient because she makes her weak at the knees.

Doctor Michael Jackson (yes, really) who works just down the hall from Scully and who has quickly become a regular lunch buddy of hers, pops his head round her open door and grins. “Hey, Dana. We’re heading out for a drink if you want to join us?”

Scully looks down at her formal work attire. “I don’t really think I’m dressed for it,” she says apologetically. This has been her excuse all week. She’s not sure what’s stopping her from going out with them, or what encourages Michael to keep inviting her along on various activities, but she feels unexplained anxiety flare in her gut at the thought of taking him up on the offer.

Today, however, he doesn’t offer his usual smile and farewell. Today, he takes a seat across the desk from her and puts his elbows on the edge, chin resting on his clasped hands.

“Something up?” He asks and his voice is kind.

Scully sighs. “I suppose I’m a little nervous,” she admits, and he raises his eyebrows in question. “I haven’t really gone out drinking with a group of people since medical school. I guess I’m a little out of the habit.”

Michael nods like he understands. “It’s cool. I’m not saying you have to come but we all think you’re cool, Dana. We’d love to have you join us. And, speaking for myself, I don’t want you to be lonely. It’s gotta be weird being in a new country by yourself.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Scully says, feeling touched. She smiles. “Alright. I’ll meet you there in a bit?”

Michael grins. “We’ll be at the Mayflower.”

And then he’s gone and Scully’s heart feels a little lighter. She’s looking forward to getting to know her colleagues a little better. They’ve all been kind and friendly since the moment she arrived and she feels guilty for pushing them away. She’s had this kind of adjustment depression before when she left for college and then when she moved to D.C. She _knows_ in her logical mind that the best thing to do is to put herself out there, even though her heart isn’t really in it.

But it’s also something else. It feels a bit like betrayal to have fun when she feels like she should still be grieving. Two months doesn’t feel like enough time to mourn for Mulder, especially given the magnitude of the place he inhabited in her life. It still feels like part of her is back in D.C. with him. A therapist would probably tell her that moving across the ocean was her way of pretending it didn’t really happen, that she’s just taking a vacation. If she doesn’t have to see his office become hers, or someone else’s, she doesn’t have to process his absence fully.

And maybe that’s true. Maybe it would be a good idea to actually see a therapist who would actually tell her that, who would force her to process it. She knows that keeping it bottled in her chest isn’t going to work. She knows that it will all come spilling out again.

She shakes her head and shuts down her computer, willing her thoughts of Mulder to the back of her mind. She’s going to have a nice night out with her new friends if it kills her.

~

“Stella, would you just go home?”

Detective Inspector Masters is looking at her with fond exasperation as she types slowly with her good hand. She’s been working on case reports and examining files on open cases to keep herself occupied until she can finally get back to work. She’s also been slipping into briefings about cases that are none of her business and pouring over those files too, looking for connections so that she can still be of some use. She feels lost and unmoored. She wants to work, damn it.

“I’m just on my way out,” she lies, smiling half-heartedly at the DI over the screen of her computer. Unfortunately, she works in a building full of trained lie-spotters, a decision she curses every time she’s caught out like this.

“Is that why you’ve just made a fresh pot of coffee?”

Stella shrugs and the DI sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose briefly.

“Go home, Stella,” he says, and his tone tells her that this is not a request. It’s as close to an order as she’s had all week. “Gina has practically demanded that I send you home for the next few days. She thinks you’re overworking yourself and I honestly have to agree.”

Stella scowls. “I’d really like to stay and keep working on the Morrison case. I think I’m finally getting somewhere.”

DI Masters raises an eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware you were assigned to that case, DS Gibson.”

At the sound of her title, Stella straightens her back. “I thought Tony could maybe use some help with the background checks.”

“Uh huh,” the DI says with a look that says he definitely does not believe her. “Look, you’re on official leave until a week from Monday. Go home and, I don’t know, watch telly, read a book, do whatever you do when you’re not working.”

Stella doesn’t want to tell him that the reason she won’t go home is because she keeps having nightmares. She’s never had a gun pointed at her before and she can’t stop thinking about it every time she lets her mind wander. It’s easier to keep the anxiety at bay when she’s working. But the last thing she wants is for anyone to see her as weak, as a woman who can’t handle the stresses of her position. So she doesn’t say that.

The DI lowers his voice even though there’s nobody in the room but the two of them, and says, “Are you sure you don’t want me to set you up an appointment with psych? It’s really quite common for officers to-”

“I’m fine, sir,” she bites out, grabbing her jacket from the back of her chair and pulling it on. She feels the sleeves of her blouse roll up uncomfortably but doesn’t bother to fix them. “I’ll see you in a week.”

With that, she leaves as fast as she can. She can feel her boss’s eyes boring into her back but she doesn’t turn round. She hesitates only for a moment outside of the station before she turns right and heads to the pub. She really needs a drink.

~

When Scully walks into the pub that night, she’s greeted with a hug from Michael and pleasant smiles and greetings from the rest of the table. She recognises some faces as the other doctors who share her shifts but there are several people she hasn’t met before. She drapes her blazer over a seat between Michael and Diane - the doctor who works next door to her - and excuses herself to the bar.

It’s busy so she finds herself a space and leans her forearms on the bar with her hands clasped, waiting for a bartender to be free to serve her. She plays absently with a coaster, letting the bustle of the pub wash over her. Scully has always liked white noise. It helps her think. But right now she wants to do anything but think because, as always, her thoughts go to the one place she’d really rather they didn’t.

A smooth voice from beside her orders a glass of red wine and her hearts skips unexpectedly. She risks a glance to her right and sees a tumble of blonde curls and soft hands playing with a ten pound note, the fingernails painted a gentle shade of pink. She swallows. Of course. Naturally. Stella fucking Gibson.

Scully tries not to think about how painfully unprofessional it is that her heart rate has soared quite alarmingly at the realisation that she’s standing next to the woman she has been thinking about all week. For a moment, she entertains the thought of saying hello but the very thought seems absurd. What would she even say? How could she greet her without looking and sounding like this woman has occupied her every waking thought? She takes a deep breath to calm her dizzying nerves but it doesn’t seem to help. She’s pretty sure she’s forgotten how to breathe.

How would a normal person go about this? Pretend to only vaguely recognise her (“hey, uh, Stella, right?”)? Greet her like a friend (“oh hi, Stella, I didn’t see you there!”)? Start professionally (“hi, I’m Doctor Scully. I think I treated you recently. How’s your arm?”)? Pretend they’ve never met before (“do you come here often?”)?

Scully wants to scream. She is terrible - absolutely terrible - at flirting. Mulder had told her so once when she’d tried to use it as an information-gathering tactic. It had not gone well. The thought of Mulder briefly brings those feelings of guilt and betrayal flooding back but then the bartender is free and Scully orders a whiskey on the rocks before her brain can run away with her.

“Oh, hi,” says Stella fucking Gibson and Scully just about chokes on her own tongue because this greeting is apparently directed at her. Stella herself looks a little awkward as she goes on. “I’m not sure you remember me, but-”

“Stella,” says Scully before she can stop herself, flashing what she hopes is not a nervous smile. It’s then she remembers that Stella is also a trained detective and wants to punch herself hard in the face. And then, because she can’t think of a damn better thing to say, “You really shouldn’t be drinking with those painkillers, you know.”

_Oh, kill me now._

Stella, bless her, smiles warmly. “Well, in my defence, I didn’t expect to get caught by my doctor.”

“Apparently we quite like spending our friday nights getting smashed like everybody else,” Scully jokes and her damn heart is still hammering. She swallows her nerves and tries again. “So, are you here with anyone?”

Stella’s smile wavers for a moment before she shakes her head. “Just me tonight. I was on my way home and just stopped in."

Great, Scully thinks, now you’ve upset her. She really, _really_ isn’t good at this.

“You?”

It takes Scully a moment to realise what Stella is asking her. “Oh, I’m here with some people from work. I don’t really know them all that well, though. I haven’t been there long.”

_Stop being so damn obvious._

“When did you move over here?” Stella asks as her wine arrives along with Scully’s whiskey. She takes an alluring sip and Scully mentally prays to God to give her the strength to at the very least be cute if she can’t be flirty.

“Almost two weeks ago now,” she says. “You met me on my first day at work.”

Stella eyes her curiously. “You were in the FBI before that, right?”

“Yes,” Scully agrees, swirling her whiskey around in the glass.

“Did you ever deal with ritualistic crime?” Stella asks and the question takes Scully aback a little.

“Uh, yeah,” she says, regaining herself. “I worked on something called the X-Files which dealt with unexplained phenomena and quite often it would turn out to be ritualistic cult crime. My partner was an excellent profiler and, with my background in medicine, we made a good team for that kind of thing.”

Stella nods along with interest and Scully is thankful that she doesn’t react to the words “unexplained phenomena” they way she had feared. She didn’t mind being Mrs. Spooky back in D.C. but she doesn’t want to gain that same reputation here. It was never really her reputation anyway, just by association. If there’s one positive to moving here, it’s that she gets to leave that behind. She gets to build a reputation for herself that doesn’t rely on anyone else.

“Then maybe you can help me with something,” says Stella, reaching into her back and pulling out something all too familiar: a case file.

Scully laughs behind her glass. “Are you sure you should be showing me this? In a bar?”

“Oh, absolutely not,” Stella smirks, laying the file on the bar and flipping it open. She flips through the file until she finds the crime scene photographs and pulls them out, laying them out over the file for Scully to see. She points to some burned grass near the body. “Do you recognise these marks?”

Scully lifts the paper and brings it closer to her face so she can get a better look in the dim light. “I can’t see too well without my glasses but they look like alchemical symbols. This one here,” she pointed to several cross crossing lines with her pinky, “looks like the second symbol for copper.”

“The second?” Stella asks.

“Mm, the first is the same symbol you see used to mean “female” - the circle with the cross at the bottom - because alchemists associated copper with Venus. Using the second symbol is strange to me. It’s like a deliberate attempt to avoid associations with femininity,” she muses and Stella nods solemnly beside her.

“This is the second killing of this type. In both cases, the victims were raped and had their vaginas mutilated,” she says thoughtfully. “We might be looking for someone with a history of gender-based violence.”

“We?” Scully asks, amused by Stella’s familiarity.

Stella grins. “Tell me you’re not interested,” she says and it sounds like a challenge. Scully has never been one to back down from a challenge.

“Of course I am but the FBI doesn’t have jurisdiction in London,” she shoots back.

“Ah, but you’re not FBI anymore. You’re a consultant for the Metropolitan Police,” says Stella with so much confidence that Scully could almost take her word for it.

“That sounds quite highbrow. I like it,” she says. “Do I get a badge?”

“Unfortunately not,” Stella replies.

Scully pouts. “That’s a shame. I miss flashing my badge and getting into places I have no business being.”

Stella shoots her a wide grin. “Ever snuck in anywhere just to satisfy your curiosity?”

“Just the US Department of Defense,” Scully smirks, giggling when she sees Stella’s amused bewilderment. “But that was more cloak and dagger than official business.”

“You have a wild side I didn’t expect,” Stella laughs, tucking the pictures back into their file and the file back into her bag. She finishes the last dregs of her wine. “Don’t you have friends you should be getting back to?”

Scully smiles and looks over at the table where her colleagues are laughing together. “I don’t think they’re missing me,” she says and she doesn’t feel the flash of sadness she expects to come with that realisation.

“If you’d rather, we can go back to my place and have some more reasonably-priced wine?” Stella offers and Scully is trembling in her seat.

This is unprofessional. She absolutely should not be doing this. But she’s clicking with Stella in a way she has so rarely experienced before. There is something inside her, something desperate, which wants to know absolutely everything about this woman. Scully could listen to her talk about nothing for hours, hearing every click of her tongue and pop of her lips.

But there’s also something else, a deep curiosity honed from years of detective work, that makes her yearn for answers about this case. She wants to work with Stella on this. She wants to read the case file and examine the photographs and piece together the evidence and she wants to do it all with Stella.

Maybe something in her misses having a partner and, while Stella will never be Mulder, Scully realises that she doesn’t want her to be. She wants her to be Stella.

Fuck professionalism.

She smiles. “That sounds great.”


	3. crying underwater so you don't hear

Stella’s apartment -  _ flat  _ \- is minimalist and almost impersonal. It’s so tidy that Scully has a hard time believing anybody actually lives here. It doesn’t particularly surprise her, though. Stella does seem the type to keep an obsessively tidy living space. Everything about her is so very put together from her perfectly styled hair to her monochrome wardrobe. 

“Red or white?” Stella asks as she slips out of her coat, hanging it up on a rack by the door before helping Scully out of hers. 

“Uh, red, please,” Scully manages, somewhat flustered by Stella’s unexpected etiquette. She doesn’t think anyone has physically helped her take off her coat since- 

Well. Since her third year working with Mulder.

She shakes her head brusquely and follows Stella into the kitchen which is also immaculate. Scully suspects that Stella doesn’t spend much time here. She strikes Scully as very involved in her work, driven to the point of obsession. She can easily imagine Stella pouring over files until four in the morning though, somehow, she can’t imagine her calling her partner to share her findings. From what little she knows of the British police force, officers tend not to have “partners” perse but rather a pool of colleagues with whom they variously work. Coming from the FBI, Scully can scarcely imagine not knowing who she’ll be working alongside on any given day.

She wonders if Stella is lonely, if that’s why she invited her over tonight. To be entirely honest, Scully isn’t sure she cares.

Scully hovers awkwardly in the kitchen, caught between wanting to help and having no idea where Stella kept her glasses. Instead, she admires the way Stella’s hair tumbles across her left shoulder when she sweeps it to the side to twist the corkscrew. But then she notices the brace on Stella’s wrist and comes back to herself all at once.

“Here, I’ve got that,” she says, stepping forward to wrap her fingers around the bottle. “You shouldn’t be twisting your wrist like that.”

Stella rolls her eyes but steps back to let Scully open the bottle without complaint. She pulls two wine glasses out of one of the cupboards above the oven.

“I usually don’t let people tell me what to do unless they’ve chained me to my bed first,” Stella says offhandedly and a laugh bubbles out of Scully unexpectedly.

She raises a hand automatically to quiet the sound but Stella is too quick for her and catches her wrist with a sly smile. 

“You have a beautiful laugh,” she says and her gaze is full of sincerity when she catches Scully’s eye. “Don’t hide it.”

_ Oh, fuck. I am so screwed. _

Stella settles them both on her black leather couch with their wine and the case folder open on the coffee table. She begins spreading out the photographs and documents so Scully can get an overview of the case.

“Alana McCoist was raped and murdered in a park near her home six months ago,” says Stella, handing Scully a pile of photographs of the scene. Like the photo she had seen in the bar, the first one also features a woman lying face down in the grass, a symbol burned above her head. “This symbol was too disturbed by the first officers on the scene to be identified but, with the second murder, I think it looks like the same symbol you identified.”

Scully looks closer. “Looks like it,” she says, looking through the other pictures until she comes across a close-up photograph of another symbol which she doesn’t recognise. “What’s this?”

“We don’t know,” says Stella, sipping her wine. “It’s not another alchemical symbol?”

“Not one I’ve seen before,” says Scully thoughtfully. “It does remind me of something, though.”

The way Stella is looking at her makes Scully think she’s waiting for her to confirm a thought she’s already had, one she hasn’t voiced to anyone. Initially, the weight of Stella’s trust and expectation is almost suffocating.

“It reminds me of something my sister used to wear,” she says slowly, watching Stella’s reaction carefully. “I don’t think it’s exactly the same but it’s been a while since I’ve seen it. She said it was for protection, a sigil of some kind.”

Stella nods thoughtfully. “Do you think your sister would recognise it?”

Scully smiles a small, wistful smile. “She passed away a few years ago,” she says, trying to show in her voice and her face that Stella hasn’t upset her.

“I’m sorry,” says Stella.

“Thanks,” Scully replies, used to this ritual from well-meaning old family friends who haven’t heard about Melissa or her father. “So, who’s the second victim?”

Stella looks back down at the case spread across the table. “Melissa Fiennes,” she says and Scully almost laughs. 

If Melissa were here, she’d tell her there’s no such thing as coincidence and that thought alone brings Scully a little warmth. It’s been a long time since she’s been able to think about Melissa like this, like she used to; a fond, subtle longing for her big sister like she’d had through college and medical school and the months she didn’t see her. 

The wine is making Scully feel cosy and comfortable and she finds herself wishing she didn’t have to leave. She blinks heavily, trying to keep her eyes open, and briefly catches sight of Stella who is smiling at her so gently that Scully feels her insides turn to jelly.

“Sleepy?” She asks, her dark chocolate voice low and gentle. 

“Mm, maybe a little,” Scully whispers, shaking her head and pushing her arms above her head to stretch the sleep out of her back. She feels something pop satisfyingly at the base of her spine. “I should go.”

For a brief moment, Stella looks almost disappointed but it passes so quickly that Scully thinks it could easily have been her imagination. 

“I’ll call you a cab. But first,” she says, resting a hand on Scully’s knee. “Tell me another story about the FBI?”

Scully can’t deny that the question surprises her. She’d been considering what she’d told Stella about what had happened in Arkansas, wondering if perhaps it had been a stupid thing to do. After all, it’s not like she typically shares gruesome case stories with her patients. But, then again, Stella is a police officer and Scully has plenty of stories less gruesome than the murder case they’ve been discussing all night.

Scully bites her lip, quickly becoming aware of an entirely new problem in that she doesn’t know how Stella will react to Mulder’s more unconventional methods and ideas. When they’d been working together, she had grown indifferent to the snide comments they often received from other agents, had learned not to care what other people thought of them. But now, with Mulder gone and Scully slightly fuzzy from the wine, she has no idea how she might react to Stella’s criticism.

“Well,” she says slowly, “I once worked a case in Maryland where a man killed five people. When he was arrested, he claimed that he’d been killing the same man over and over again. He passed the polygraph and was institutionalised. Later, a few streets away, a woman shot her neighbour, believing he was her husband and that he was having an affair with a blonde woman. It turned out, the neighbour was playing in a hammock with his dog - a golden retriever.”

A quick study of Stella’s face tells Scully that this was a good story to choose. She looks unabashedly fascinated and Scully finds herself biting down a smile.

“In both victim’s houses, we found piles of video tapes of cable news shows. Mul- my partner, Agent Mulder, and I split the load and spent the night watching them.”

It feels very strange to say Mulder’s name out loud but, thankfully, Scully finds that it doesn’t bring back any particularly awful feelings. In fact, saying his name brings a nostalgic smile to her lips.

“There was a device being planted in the cable feed of several homes around the town which caused paranoid hallucinations. I started hearing a clicking noise when I was on the phone with Agent Mulder and was convinced we were being bugged,” she says, deliberately sidestepping the issue of the smoking man. “He was being evasive and I came to believe that he was betraying me so, when he came looking for me in the motel, I was so afraid that I shot at him and ran.”

Stella raises her eyebrows, lowering her glass before she manages to take a sip. “You shot your partner?”

“No!” Scully says, absolutely hating the way those words make her heart leap into her throat. She looks down at her hands. “No, I- I missed. He’s- he was fine.”

When Scully looks back up at Stella again, the look in her eyes makes her feel like she’s under a microscope.

“I have to go,” she says, feeling her brain begin to detach itself from the rest of her body. It’s a strange thing, dissociating while also a little tipsy, and Scully can’t say she cares for it. 

Stella’s expression shifts and then goes suddenly neutral, like she’s slipping behind a prepared facade. She takes Scully’s hand gently lifts a pen from the table. Scully watches, awestruck, as she carefully writes down her phone number.

“Call me,” she says, helping Scully to her feet. 

Scully is too shocked to say anything. She manages to squeak an embarrassing ‘goodbye’ before she bolts out the door.

~

Stella stays by her front door for several moments, replaying the final events of the evening in her head. It’s perfectly clear to her that something had made Scully deeply uncomfortable, perhaps even upset, but she’s not sure exactly what triggered those feelings. 

_ You shot your partner?  _ she had asked.

Stella sees Scully quite clearly in her head, watches her clam up, her body curl into itself as panic seeps into the natural softness of her face. She remembers asking her, during that first appointment, why she had left the FBI. Scully had spun her a line about putting her medical degree to good use but Stella had known even then that there was more to it than that. The fond, nostalgic way she spoke about her previous job told Stella that she missed it, that something had forced her to leave, to come to England and work in a hospital, an ocean away from whatever had happened to her. She wonders if maybe Scully  _ had  _ shot her partner, just maybe not during the case she’d been describing. Perhaps she’d shot him, permanently wounded him. Perhaps, and Stella shudders at the thought, perhaps she’d killed him.

At this, Stella tries to shake all speculation from her head. Whatever happened in the past, Stella just hopes it won’t keep Scully from calling her. 

~

Scully arrives back at her flat and instantly throws up in the toilet before she sits down on the bathroom floor and cries. She feels utterly mortified. Though she understands, logically, that she’s been triggered, that it isn’t her fault, that she can’t help it, she feels embarrassed and stupid for the way she’d rushed out of Stella’s apartment -  _ flat!  _

Furious with herself, Scully digs her fingernails into the palms of her hands. She hates this country, hates that they have different words for things, that they drive on the wrong side of the road, that they use celsius for everything even though fahrenheit makes so much more sense from a medical standpoint. 

With tears streaming down her face, Scully digs in her coat pocket for her phone and calls her mum.

“Hello?”

“Mom?” She whispers tearfully.

“Dana? Honey, what’s the matter?”

Scully lets out a soft sob. “I miss you.”

Maggie Scully sighs heavily. “Oh, Dana. It’s okay. I’m here.”

Somehow, for some godforsaken reason, this sentiment makes rage flare up in Scully’s stomach and she throws her phone across the room. It hits the wall and springs apart, the battery clattering across the bathroom tiles. 

_ No you’re not!  _ she wants to scream.  _ You’re not here and I’m alone. _

But it wouldn’t be fair because, after all, Scully is the one who left to start a new life. And it’s working out so damn well for her so far, huh? She buries her head in her knees and cries as hard as her lungs will let her.

The landline starts ringing in the living room. Logically, Scully knows it’s probably her mother, frantically calling to make sure she’s alright after she’s just called her in tears and then made herself unreachable. But she can’t make herself get up to answer it, can’t comprehend the physical reality of the world around her.

She presses her hands over her ears, trying to block out the piercing ring, and cries harder.  _ Stop, _ she wants to scream.  _ Stop, make it stop. _

“Dana, honey, it’s me,” says her mother’s voice and Scully yanks her hands away, feeling her entire body begins to relax in response to her mother’s voice. In school, she’d learned that babies are naturally soothed by their mother’s voice and, right now, she understands precisely why that is. “Please call me back when you get this. I know you’re upset but I just want to be here for you.”

Scully can’t stand it anymore. She gets up and sprints to the phone, grabbing the receiver just as Maggie starts to say goodbye.

“Mom, wait!” She gasps, almost knocking the base to the floor in her haste.

“Oh, honey, I’m here,” Maggie breathes and Scully can feel her concern, her love, reaching through the phone to wrap around her heart. “Talk to me. What’s happened?”

“Nothing,” says Scully, sniffling sadly. “I just- I had a bit to drink and then- I kept thinking about-”

She can’t finish but she doesn’t have to. Maggie knows.

“Have you thought any more about seeing a bereavement counsellor?” She asks tentatively. 

Scully remembers the last time Maggie had brought this up, how she’d yelled that she didn’t need help, that she was coping. She feels a flash of guilt now when she hears the hesitance in her mother’s voice.

“A bit,” she says. “I think I should. I’m just- I’m not sure I’m ready.”

Maggie sighs. “I don’t think you’re ever going to feel ready, Dana. You’ve been trained in this sort of thing. If you were talking to a patient, what would you recommend?”

Scully swallows, taking a deep breath to calm the returning nausea. “I’d refer them to a counsellor,” she admits reluctantly. “I’d encourage them to talk about it and to make use of their support network.”

The world starts to return to normal size around her as she makes her decision.

“I’ll contact someone in the morning,” she says.

“Good,” says Maggie, sounding relieved. Scully hadn’t truly considered how much anxiety her mother was carrying on her shoulders until she’d physically heard it leave. “It’ll be good for you, Dana. I’m sure of it.”

Despite everything, Scully smiles slightly. “Thanks, mom.” She sighs. “I, um, it’s late. I should-”

“Okay. Sleep well, honey,” says Maggie softly.

When she hangs up, Scully feels like someone has hollowed her out. She’s so drained by the night’s events that she collapses on her stomach on top of her covers and sleeps.

(Across London, Stella Gibson drinks the rest of her wine, alone.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took so long! i had a lot going on. thanks for everybody who is still reading and commenting <3


	4. you can keep all your misery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it's been a while!! i've had half of this chapter written for a while but just haven't quite been able to fit all the pieces together. pls enjoy!

At 7:30 on Monday morning, Stella wakes despite having not set her alarm. Instinctively, she sits up to begin her day but notices the cast on her arm and flops back down against the pillows in frustration. One week’s mandatory leave. She hasn’t taken this much time off at once since her time in uniform and even then it was to take a holiday to Spain. She has absolutely no idea what to do with her time.

Honestly, she’d hoped that Dana might call. Stella isn’t the type to wait by the phone but she has to admit to checking perhaps slightly more frequently than usual. She tells herself that she’s just bored, at a loose end. If she was working, there’s no way she’d be hung up on a woman she’s met all of twice.

So, giving herself a shake, she returns to the coffee table where that damn case file is taunting her. She hadn’t bothered clearing it up last night before she went to bed, aware she’d probably want to work on it again first thing in the morning. And it’s not like she has anywhere to be.

So she sits down.

~

Anxious about missing her stop, Scully gets off the bus far too early and ends up walking the remaining 20 minutes to Aldersfield Clinic. She’d been too nervous to eat breakfast that morning, afraid she would be able to keep anything down. The crisp air bites at her cheeks and nose, turning them slightly pink. 

When she turns the final corner and sees the clinic building just down the street, her heart begins to pound uncomfortably in her chest. She feels her throat begin to close over and gives herself an impatient shake. She isn’t sixteen anymore; she’s past this. For god’s sake, she’s a grown woman, an ex-FBI agent, a fully-qualified and practicing medical doctor - she’s fucking  _ got  _ this, okay?

Still, her stomach doesn’t seem to get the message and she’s very glad she decided to skip out on breakfast.

This is ridiculous. This is utterly ridiculous. 

_ Pull yourself together, Dana.  _

She’s got this

“Hi, my name is Dana Scully. I have an appointment with Dr Anderson.”

She so hasn’t got this.

The receptionist invites her to take a seat and Scully spends the next ten minutes anxiously bouncing her leg and trying not to let her brain talk her out of this. She reads every poster on the wall across from her just to occupy her mind but the obnoxious ticking of the clock on the wall is drawing too much of her attention. She starts grinding her teeth unconsciously. 

The door to the rest of the building opens a few times and each time she snaps upright, forced to the edge of her seat as though pushed by some unseen hand. Finally, a petite woman with blonde hair pulled back into a long French braid opens the door halfway and smiles at Scully.

“Dana Scully?”

Scully takes a deep breath and follows the woman down the corridor, heart racing faster with every step.

“Hi, Dana. I’m Claire,” she says, leading Scully into a room on the right and closing the door behind them. “Take any seat you like.”

Scully sits facing the door, automatically taking note of the window as another possible entry point. She keeps it in her peripheral vision. Claire sits across from her, settling easily into her chair and folding one leg over the other. Suddenly aware of her own stiffness, Scully tries to relax. 

“So, Dana,” she begins, glancing down at her notebook. “What can I help you with today?”

The question is so open-ended that Scully isn’t sure what to say. She hates the wording - what  _ can  _ Claire help her with? The paranoia hits her like a kick in the gut. What if Claire thinks she’s overreacting? What if there’s something dramatically wrong with her that Claire can’t fix?

“I’m not really sure where to start,” she says, hoping to buy herself some time.

Claire smiles understandingly. It makes Scully feel a little sick. 

“That’s alright,” she says. “It’s quite common to feel a bit stuck at the beginning. Why don’t you start by telling me how you’ve been feeling lately?”

“Fine,” says Scully automatically, kicking herself almost immediately afterwards. “Not great,” she amends quickly.

“How so?”

Scully puffs out her cheeks, shuffling her feet awkwardly. Her coat makes a loud rustling sound where it’s positioned on her lap and she returns to holding herself unnaturally still, suddenly aware of the suffocating silence of the room.

“I’ve been feeling very, um, lonely and just, I suppose, depressed and anxious,” she says hesitantly, studying Claire’s face for any signs of rebuke but she’s surprisingly difficult to read. “I just moved here in the last few weeks and it’s been...difficult.”

Claire nods. “You’re having trouble adjusting? Missing home?”

Scully nods. “Something like that.”

“Something like?” Claire asks, raising an eyebrow. When Scully doesn’t answer, she says, “What made you decide to move?”

“Oh, um,” Scully mutters, swallowing against the ever-incessant pounding of her heart. She feels sick and overheated. “I had to get away.”

“Why?”

“I used to be an FBI agent,” Scully begins, licking her lips nervously. “My partner…”

She trails off, unable to find the words to explain exactly what Mulder meant to her, what happened to him, what she’s feeling. Mulder’s presence is still so strong. She can almost feel him sitting next to her, smell his cologne, hear his fingers tapping absently on the steering wheel of the car as the drive through rural Mississippi.

“What happened?” Claire asks, breaking Scully out of her thoughts. Her pen is poised over the page of her notebook and Scully can’t tear her eyes away from it. 

“He was shot in the line of duty,” she intones blankly, allowing a brown blanket to wrap itself around her mind. 

Claire nods. “You were there?”

“Yes,” Scully breathes. 

“Can you tell me what happened?”

Instead of speaking, Scully reaches into her bag, wincing when her coat makes that rustling noise again, and pulls out the report she’d written after Mulder had- after it had happened. Wordlessly, she hands it to Claire who places it on the table between them following a brief glance at its title. 

“This is your field report?” She asks and Scully nods. Claire sighs. “Dana, I know this is difficult, but I’d like you to tell me what happened in your own words.”

“Those are my own words,” Scully says against the jolt of panic that shoots up into her throat. 

Claire smiles carefully. “When was the last time you spoke about what happened? Was it when you wrote this report?”

Scully nods, finding herself unable to look Claire in the eye. She fixes her gaze on Claire’s left shoulder.

“It’s not an easy thing to talk about,” Claire says, leaning forward. “When you’re ready. Just take your time.

Scully takes a deep breath and tries to calm herself. It’s just an incident report, she tells herself. It’ll be over soon. 

“While investigating an incident related to our case, Agent Mulder and I entered the house of a witness, Mr Robert James Brace. Throughout the interview, he was co-operative and gave us no reason to suspect we were in any danger. Mr Brace then stood to take Agent Mulder to the kitchen and pulled a gun. He fired one shot at Agent Mulder. I drew my own weapon and fired centre mass. Mr Brace died at the scene. Agent Mulder later died in hospital,” Scully says, aware of her expression glazing over. She feels sick.

Claire raises an eyebrow and picks up Scully’s incident report from the table, scanning it briefly. “You’ve repeated your report almost word for word,” she says and Scully can’t figure out what to take from the strange tone of her voice. “Was that a conscious choice?”

“You wanted to know what happened,” Scully says hotly, shifting anxiously in her seat. “You asked me to tell you and I did.”

“Yes,” Claire agrees slowly, eyes drifting back to the report. “Dana, do you know this report by heart?”

Scully swallows. “Of course I do. I wrote it.”

“Do you remember every report you’ve ever written in such detail?” Claire asks sceptically.

“This is different,” Scully says, feeling anger race through her body like an awful pain.  

“Why?”

“He was my- colleague.”

Claire’s eyes on her are absolutely terrifying. Scully wants to shrink down into her chair and disappear. 

“Was Agent Mulder the first of your colleagues to die in the line of duty?” She asks.

“No, but-”

“Was he the first to be killed in front of you?”

Scully clenches her firsts. “No, but I-”

“So why was this different?”

“He was my friend!” Scully snaps, closing her eyes to better focus on her breathing. There are traitorous tears burning in her eyes and she feels like she might be sick if she doesn’t let some of the sobs out of her chest soon. But not here. She won’t cry here. “He was my partner,” she says, more quietly. “We- the nature of our department made us something of a joke at the FBI. We only had each other. He- he was my best friend.”

Despite promising that she wouldn’t let herself be torn apart by this session, Scully can’t hold back her tears anymore. She snatches a tissue from the box Claire offers her she takes deep, slow breaths, fighting to get herself back under control. 

“He was someone very special to you,” Claire says. It isn’t a question but Scully nods anyway. Claire scans the field report again. “This happened just a few months ago?”

“I miss him,” Scully whispers, suddenly feeling the need to tell Claire everything. It feels, as cliche as it sounds, as though a floodgate has been opened and now she doesn’t know how to hold back the tide. “He- I never told him but he meant the world to me. He was always so focused on his stupid, bizarre theories but- but I understand - understood - his crusade. Working with him was the most interesting time of my life.”

Claire is quiet but Scully knows she’s listening and this makes her feel both comforted and anxious. It’s a strange feeling. She doesn’t like it.

“He always had the most ridiculous notions,” Scully goes on, smiling a little at the thought of Mulder’s face when he’d posit an absolutely absurd explanation for a crime. “Believed in aliens, crop circles, all that stuff. He was so convincing sometimes I almost believed him.”

“You don’t share his beliefs?” Claire asks.

Scully huffs out a laugh. “No. We were always at odds about that. But we just- worked.”

Claire nods thoughtfully. “What was he like? What did you like about him?”

“He was sweet,” Scully says immediately, thinking of the day after her father had died, how gently Mulder had cupped her cheek, murmured her first name like a sacred prayer. “Headstrong and impulsive and completely ridiculous with no respect for the forensic integrity of a crime scene - but he was kind. And he believed so strongly. He wanted to believe.”

Scully thinks longingly of Mulder’s poster hanging in her flat, remembers carefully unpinning it from the wall in his office and packing it safely inside a cardboard tube. She remembers hearing a noise, turning round to find Skinner standing in the doorway. They’d packed away Mulder’s things in silence. He’d put a hand on her upper back and walked her to the front door of the building, had offered her a lift home. She’d refused. She’d wanted to drive.

“It sounds like you were very close,” Claire says.

_ Close. _ The word is so painfully inadequate that Scully almost laughs but she stops herself because she’s afraid that, if she laughs, she might cry again.

“Very,” she says instead.

~

Stella is blankly staring at the television which is playing yet another episode of  _ ‘Allo ‘Allo!  _ when she finally becomes aware that her phone is ringing. She searches through the strewn papers which have completely engulfed her coffee table and finally manages to bring it to her ear with a somewhat breathless greeting.

“Hi, Stella?” says a soft, American voice. “It’s Dana Scully. I was wondering if you’d like to go out for lunch? On me.”

A smile spreads slowly across Stella’s face. “I thought you’d never ask.”


End file.
